Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity

Ashgate
edited by David Ricks and Paul Magdalino
ISBN: 0860786137
price: $84.95   hardcover

Perhaps because of the fact that modern Greece is, through the Orthodox Church, inextricably linked with the Byzantine heritage, the precise meaning of this heritage, in its various aspects, has until now been surprisingly little discussed by scholars.
This collection of specially commissioned essays presents an overview of some of the different, and often conflicting, tendencies manifested by modern Greek attitudes to Byzantium since the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The book shows just how formative views of Byzantium have been for modern Greek life and letters: for historiography and imaginative literature, on the one hand, and on the other, for language, law, and the definition of a culture.
All Greek has been translated, and the volume is aimed at Byzantinists and Neohellenists alike. Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity is the fourth volume in the series published by Ashgate for the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London.
Contents: Editors' preface; From Christian Roman emperors to the glorious Greek ancestors, Alexis Politis; Aspects of modern Greek historiography of Byzantium, George Huxley; On the intellectual content of Greek nationalism: Paparrigopoulos, Byzantium and the Great Idea, Paschalis M. Kitromilides; Byzantine law as practice and as history in the nineteenth century, Caroula Argyriadis-Kervégan; Byzantium and the Greek Language Question in the nineteenth century, Peter Mackridge; Metamorphoseon permulti libri: Byzantine literature translated into modern Greek, Panagiotis A. Agapitos; 'As Byzantine then as it is today': Pope Joan and Roïdis's Greece, Ruth Macrides; Papadiamantis, ecumenism and the theft of Byzantium, Robert Shannan Peckham; Two cheers for Byzantium: equivocal attitudes in the poetry of Palamas and Cavafy, Anthony Hirst; Byzantium and the novel tradition in the twentieth century: from Penelope Delta to Maro Douka, Marianna Spanaki; 'Our glorious Byzantinism': Papatzonis, Seferis, and the rehabilitation of Byzantium in post war Greek poetry, Roderick Beaton; Byzantium in contemporary Greece: the Neo-Orthodox current of ideas, Vasilios N. Makrides; The restoration of Thessaloniki's Byzantine monuments and their place in the modern city, Eftychia Kourkoutidou-Nikolaïdou; 'Thessaloniki and life', Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis (translated by Leo Marshall); Index.